[2][3][4][5] The vague adjectives of very and large allow for a broad and subjective interpretation, but attempts at defining a metric and threshold have been made.
[10] Key areas where a VLDB may present challenges include configuration, storage, performance, maintenance, administration, availability and server resources.
[13] To overcome these issues techniques such as clustering, cloned/replicated/standby databases, file-snapshots, storage snapshots or a backup manager may help achieve the RTO and availability, although individual methods may have limitations, caveats, license, and infrastructure requirements while some may risk data loss and not meet the recovery point objective (RPO).
Some solutions to regaining performance include partitioning, clustering, possibly with sharding, or use of a database machine.
The increasing size of a VLDB may put pressure on server and network resources and a bottleneck may appear that may require infrastructure investment to resolve.